Mass Government Surveillance: The Price of a Secure Nation?

By: Danny Ho Mass government surveillance is a unique issue of concern in our increasingly technological era. Mass surveillance refers to the government’s indiscriminate monitoring of a large group of people through collection of large sets of data such as telephone records, emails, and internet activity. This issue gained public attention in 2013 when Edward Snowden, a former CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) employee and NSA (National Security Agency) contractor, leaked confidential information about the NSA’s global surveillance programs. The Snowden disclosures revealed alarming evidence of government intrusion into the private lives of individuals. Among the revelations was the clandestine government program (code-named PRISM) that allowed the NSA to gain direct access to individual Google and Yahoo accounts with court approval. The 2013 Snowden disclosures forced our government to engage with privacy advocates and the public at large with regards to the implications of its surveillance policies. However, a string of recent global and domestic terrorist attacks – from San Bernardino to Paris – renewed the push for government surveillance programs to respond to fears that terrorists will otherwise avoid government detection. Knowledge of past invasive government surveillance programs and national security fears from recent terrorist attacks have created a complex [read more]